Sky and BBC keep Ryder Cup until 2013

Sky and the BBC have further bolstered their golf coverage by securing the rights to screen the Ryder Cup and PGA European Tour for four years from 2009. The deal, agreed in principle but still subject to final negotiation, comes after the European Tour attempted to drive up the price by unbundling the Ryder Cup from the run-of-the-mill tour events.

Sky will offer live coverage of the 2010 Ryder Cup at Celtic Manor, Wales, as well as the 2012 US-hosted edition at Medinah, and the BBC will show highlights of the two tournaments.

Sky also retains the rights to live coverage of the bulk of the European Tour, with the BBC hanging on to the handful of high-profile events it screens live, a crucial part of the deal given the tour's reliance on sponsorship fees. The BBC is understood to pay a minimal rights fee, trading instead on the exposure given to sponsors by terrestrial coverage that the tour cannot afford to turn down.

This week's Scottish Open at Loch Lomond, for example, will receive blanket coverage from the BBC, which has thrown back rights to a good-quality meeting at Ascot on Saturday to stay with the golf. The coverage was one of the factors in Barclays' recent decision to sign a deal extending its sponsorship to 2012. The BBC has also hung on to the Masters, despite interest from Sky.

Chinese idol for Claridge

In perhaps the most unlikely appointment of his 23-year, 19-club career, Steve Claridge, below, has been lined up as Chinese football's answer to Simon Cowell in a Pop Idol-style reality TV show. Claridge has travelled to Beijing where he will oversee a televised talent search among 17- to 19-year-old players at Chinese clubs, and select the best as the chairman of the judges. The striker has been asked to be more diplomatic than Cowell as he whittles down the field to just four players who will be offered youth terms at one of four British clubs participating, Bolton Wanderers, Everton, Wigan and Nottingham Forest.

Fixtures not fitting

The argument for greater coordination of summer sporting events among governing bodies is becoming stronger. The weekend's action was hyped as the best of the year, but the reality was a clash between the British grand prix, Wimbledon and the Tour de France that suited no one. By contrast next weekend is relatively quiet, before the first Test against India at Lord's and the Open begin on the same day in the following week. Greater consultation is crucial as 2012 approaches. Olympic rules state that all competing events in the host city have to move outside the Olympic period, posing a major headache for event organisers.

Networks neck and neck

The BBC and ITV emerged from Sunday afternoon's ratings scrap with honours just about even. Roger Federer's epic five-set defeat of Rafael Nadal helped the BBC to record the highest overall figure, with a peak of 8 million viewers for the climax of the match, against 5.3 million for Lewis Hamilton's attempt to win at Silverstone. While the grand prix was running ITV claimed victory with 5.1 million viewers still tuned to the race as the Wimbledon final got underway, watched by only 2.2 million people. The average figures were a more straightforward success for the BBC, with 4.7 million against ITV's 3.7 million. The commercial station is taking succour from a 71% increase over last year's ratings, proof that the Hamilton effect has not run out of steam.

Mayor's major success

The Tour de France prologue in London on Saturday afternoon was vindication for Ken Livingstone's claims that the capital can be a great sporting city. It also provided the mayor with a platform for grandstanding, of which we can expect to see a great deal more as 2012 approaches. As well as personal messages of welcome on big screens, the mayor positioned himself in the starters' hut for the opening of the prologue, accompanied by Paris's mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, one of the key figures in the failed French bid for the 2012 Olympics.